5 Feb 2021 | Opinion, Ruth's blog, United Kingdom
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116171″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Picture the scene.
A freelance photojournalist attends a demonstration, does his job, documents the protest, sells the images to a national newspaper and then goes home. A few hours later, five police officers arrive at his home, confiscate his equipment and his mobile phone. He is arrested in front of his family. He is taken to the police station, fingerprinted and has his DNA taken. He is then put in a cell.
You would assume that I’m describing an event that happened in Russia or Belarus or Myanmar. I could be outlining a plot in a Hollywood film. I’m not. This happened in Kent, on Thursday, last week.
Andy Aitchison is a freelance photographer. He was taking photos of a protest at Napier Barracks in Folkestone, where people had gathered to raise concerns about the treatment of asylum seekers held inside. Andy wasn’t part of the protest, he was there as a member of the press. He sold the images to The Guardian, among others, and then, job done, went home.
Six hours later, the police arrived at his home and arrested him in front of his children on suspicion of criminal damage. They weren’t interested in his press card or why he was there. But they knew enough to seize his equipment including the memory card holding the images and his mobile phone. He was taken to the local police station, processed, fingerprinted, had his DNA taken and then held in a cell for seven hours.
When they finally released him, he was remanded on bail until 22 February and barred from going back to the Napier Barracks. This prevented him from covering the impact of a fire that occurred on the site the following day.
Andy is a journalist. He is registered with the National Union of Journalists. He is protected under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act.
The British Government talks a good game on media freedom. They are launching a National Action Plan for the Safety of Journalists. They are proposing legislation to protect free speech on campus. They have spoken out about Putin’s show trial of Navalny. Of Lukashenko’s repressive regime. Of the military coup in Myanmar. But what credibility do they have if they are enabling British journalists to be arrested on UK soil – for doing their job?
Index is truly disgusted at this behaviour. The authorities have absolutely no right to arrest a journalist for doing his job. Andy needs to be de-arrested immediately. His equipment needs to be returned to him immediately. And he needs an apology.
The British Government has zero moral authority to promote free speech and free expression around the world if they won’t abide by it at home.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”41669″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
4 Feb 2021 | India, News and features
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Farmers protesting/Randeep Maddoke/WikiCommons
India is currently witnessing one of its longest and largest ever expressions of dissent. Farmers – protesting three laws passed in September by the central government – have been camping at the borders of the national capital since 26 November last year, challenging the powers in New Delhi.
The protests would seem, on the surface, to show that India is functioning as a democracy with the freedom of individuals to protest. It is therefore ironic that at least seven journalists have been booked for reporting on the events that have transpired during the clashes between police and authorities.
On 29 January , six prominent journalists – Rajdeep Sardesai, Mrinal Pande, Zafar Agha, Vinod Jose, Paresh Nath and Anant Nath – were booked by Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh police under charges of sedition, criminal conspiracy and promoting enmity.
A day later, freelance journalist Mandeep Punia, who was on a project for The Caravan magazine, was detained by the Delhi police, a few hours after he went live on Facebook and reported on how stones were pelted at the farmers at Singhu border, even as security personnel looked on. He has since been granted bail.
Based on eyewitness testimony during a rally by the protesting farmers on Republic Day, 26 January, when India celebrates the 1950 entry into force of its Constitution, The Caravan reported that a man was killed after being shot by the Delhi police. Sardesai, Pande and Agha’s tweets echoed the testimony.
Police have vehemently denied shooting the farmer, which they claim is backed up by an autopsy report. However, the man’s family has refused to accept the Delhi police’s claim. “The doctor even told me that even though he had seen the bullet injury, he can do nothing as his hands are tied,” the farmer’s grandfather told Indian news website The Wire.
Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, was booked by the Uttar Pradesh police for tweeting the police report of the incident.
While the controversy around the farmer’s death is far from settled, the government’s decision to go after these journalists is only the latest episode of its effort to gag the voices that have dared to question it.
The question arises, why would the central government of the largest democracy in the world choose to take these steps? This was answered by the secretary general of the Press Club of India during a meeting organised to protest the intimidation of journalists covering the protests.
“The government is sending a message that while on paper we’re a democracy, we are behaving like several undemocratic states of the world,” Anand Kumar Sahay said.
The statement encompasses almost everything that journalists in India, who are not toeing the line yet, deal with as they try to speak truth to powerful authorities. India lies 142nd on Reporters Without Borders’ world press freedom rankings.
RSF says: “Ever since the general elections in the spring of 2019, won overwhelmingly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, pressure on the media to toe the Hindu nationalist government’s line has increased.”
That a large number of journalists are being booked, arrested or assaulted for doing their job just around these farmers’ protest tells a worrying story. A more thorough examination of the cases, with focus on the organisations that these journalists represent and the ideology that they support, will show whether Modi is targeting just the critical media or journalism as a whole.
There are also more covert ways in which the far-right party that governs the Indian state has told news establishments to not speak out against them if they want to preserve their business.
The mainstream news organisations in the country typically function on an advertisement-based revenue model. While this has helped in keeping the cost of the national dailies low, it has also made them dependent on large corporations and the government, the two biggest advertisers in newspapers.
As expected, the government has not missed the opportunity to milk this dependency and has led many media organisations to indulge in self-censorship and push the government agenda forward, particularly during the Covid pandemic when government advertising has increased.
While there is ample evidence of censorship by the Indian government on independent news websites like Newslaundry, it was also hinted at by the Modi in an interview with prominent English daily The Indian Express, in the run-up to Assembly Elections 2019.
In the article, Modi talks about the PM-KISAN income support or ‘dole’ scheme for farmers and compares this with payments received by other sectors from the government, such as publishing.
“I give advertisements to the Indian Express. It doesn’t benefit me, but is it a dole? Advertisements to newspapers may fit into a description of dole,” Modi said.
Media organisations are therefore on a warning by the government.
The close government scrutiny had also become clear back in 2018, when anchor Punya Prasun Bajpai was forced out from ABP News.
In a detailed account of the reasons behind his departure, Bajpai described how the channel’s proprietor had told him to avoid mentioning Modi’s name in the context of any criticism of the government.
Bajpai also described a 200-member monitoring team that was involved in observing news channels resulting in directives that would be sent to editors about what should be showed and how.
These “commandments”, which were reserved for TV news and large national dailies until 2019, have now reached the digital versions of these conventional news organisations. The only journalistic outfits who have dared to critically examine this government’s rule operate as digital platforms. The government is thus looking to “regulate” their work as well.
Censorship of content that is consumed by millions has not existed before on this scale.
But it has now permeated the Indian media to such an extent that freshers starting work in media are being told to “ride the tide” and “reserve their optimism” for when the political environment is less volatile.
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3 Feb 2021 | News and features, Statements, United Kingdom
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Photographer Andy Aitchison
Index on Censorship is extremely concerned at the arrest of freelance photographer Andy Aitchison, who was arrested at his home last Thursday after covering a demonstration at a former military barracks in Kent earlier the same day. The barracks is being used to house asylum seekers in allegedly substandard conditions.
“What is happening at Napier Barracks is an issue of significant public interest,” said Jessica Ní Mhainín, senior policy research and advocacy officer at Index on Censorship. “We have every right to know what is going on there and we need journalists and photographers like Aitchison to be free to document and report on it. But instead of enabling journalists to report in the public interest, the authorities are actively preventing them from doing so.”
Five police officers went to Aitchison’s home to arrest him on suspicion of criminal damage. They seized his memory card and mobile phone, and took him to the police station even after he had shown them his National Union of Journalists membership card. They took his fingerprints and DNA, and detained him for almost seven hours before releasing him on bail until 22 February.
“This is a blatant and appalling press freedom violation, which has already – due to the terms of his bail – resulted in Aitchison being unable to cover the fire that broke out at the same barracks on Friday afternoon,” said Ní Mhainín. “We call for Aitchison’s immediate and unconditional de-arrest, and for his equipment – which should have never been seized in the first place – to be immediately returned to him”.
“Serious questions need to be asked about how this could have happened and why it is taking so long for remediation. Has the UK forgotten that it has committed to leading the Media Freedom Coalition? This is what censorship looks like – not media freedom,” Ní Mhainín said.
Index on Censorship has filed a Council of Europe alert.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
29 Jan 2021 | Greece, Opinion, Poland, Ruth's blog, Turkey
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116129″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]The last 12 months have been difficult for everyone. Whilst many of us have lost loved ones and tried to cope with the impact of lockdowns, social restrictions, closed businesses, redundancies, reduced wages, home schooling and the fear of illness, others have sought to exploit the situation – hoping that the world wouldn’t notice.
Our theme for the winter edition of Index on Censorship magazine was Masked by Covid – the underreported stories of 2020 which had been drowned out by the global public health emergency. There were simply too many for one edition of the magazine.
The news cycle has been dominated by Covid, Trump and Brexit with little else being able to break through. This in itself provided the ideal opportunity for leaders of repressive regimes to move against their citizens with impunity; after all the world wasn’t watching. But when you add the ‘legitimacy’ of emergency regulations to the mix under the guise of protecting the population against Covid, the perfect storm for repression and tyranny has been created.
When the virus spread last spring, Index started covering how it was affecting free speech around the world through a project called Disease Control. Documenting new legislation which closed local newspapers, new regulations which restricted or delayed access to government information, limitations on the free press, the end of the right to protest in numerous countries and arrests of political activists in dozens of countries.
As we all now await to be vaccinated and long for a return to normal, you would hope that maybe the dictators and authoritarian leaders, around the globe, would mitigate their actions knowing that the world might start to pay attention. Unsurprisingly that isn’t proving to be the case.
Only this week we have seen the Polish Government ban abortion, the Greek government propose a new university police force to deal with ‘trouble makers’ on campus and, in Russia, the coronavirus restrictions have been used as a cover to arrest Alexei Navalny’s allies – in the wake of his detention and the subsequent protests.
And it hasn’t just been Covid that has provided cover for oppression. In Turkey, on 27 December – when many of us were more focused on Netflix then the news – the government passed a new piece of anti-terrorism legislation, Preventing Financing of Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. I think most of us would welcome legislation that sought to stop the proliferation of WMDs.
Whilst this legislation has ostensibly been introduced to meet a United Nations Security Council counterterrorism resolution, unfortunately this new law actually goes well beyond that. It is an unfettered attack on civil society organisations across Turkey – with a clear emphasis on undermining those organisations which seek to protect minorities, especially the Kurdish population.
The legislation enables the Interior Ministry to replace board members of NGOs with state-appointed trustees. They can also suspend all operations and activities of an NGO if members are being prosecuted on terrorism charges – this would seem completely reasonable in many nation states, but as over 300,000 people are arrested for being a member of a terrorist group in Turkey every year, the definition of terrorist isn’t quite the global standard.
The legislation also gives the Governor’s office the right to undertake annual inspections of NGOs adding a new admin burden, international NGOs are also covered by new provisions and unsurprisingly financial assets and online donations to individual campaigns can be blocked by the government to “prevent terrorist financing and money laundering”.
Erdogan has just doubled down as an authoritarian leader and did so without global condemnation or even notice. It simply isn’t good enough…
All of these actions, and the many others from Hong Kong to Uganda, seek to cause division, undermine hope in the domestic population and entrench control. The world is getting smaller, technology means that we can know what is happening, as it happens, in every corner of the world. But too many people have stopped paying attention.
For Index it means that we have to double down and keep finding new ways to tell people’s stories so no one can claim ignorance.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”41669″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
